The Most Beautiful Places in North Yorkshire
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in North Yorkshire are Fountains Abbey, Malham Cove and Ribblehead Viaduct. The list covers 6 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
North Yorkshire is England's largest county and spans two national parks: the limestone Yorkshire Dales in the west and the heather-covered North York Moors running to the sea in the east. In the Middle Ages its quiet valleys drew the Cistercians, who built some of the richest abbeys in the country, and after the dissolution of the monasteries their roofless ruins became one of the great sights of the English landscape.
Fountains Abbey, founded in 1132, is one of the largest monastic ruins in England, set at the end of the Georgian water garden of Studley Royal. Rievaulx Abbey, founded the same year, rises in a steep wooded valley with its tall Gothic choir still standing. On the coast, the ruined Whitby Abbey crowns the headland above the harbour, a silhouette that helped inspire Bram Stoker's Dracula.
The Dales show the other side of the county. Malham Cove is a curved limestone cliff about 80 metres high, topped by a pavement of clints and grikes; a waterfall once poured over its lip. At Ribblehead, the Settle–Carlisle railway crosses open moorland on a viaduct of twenty-four stone arches, completed in the 1870s. And between the Moors and York stands Castle Howard, the baroque palace designed by John Vanbrugh with its great painted dome.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fountains Abbey | Ruins | ✓ |
| 2 | Malham Cove | Cliff | |
| 3 | Ribblehead Viaduct | Viaduct | |
| 4 | Whitby Abbey | Ruins | |
| 5 | Castle Howard | Manor house | |
| 6 | Rievaulx Abbey | Abbey |
01 Fountains Abbey
United Kingdom · 35.6 km from Leeds54.110° N 1.581° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by WinnieC from Pixabay Fountains Abbey is among the best-preserved monastic ruins in England, and it has the good fortune to stand in one of the country's most carefully composed landscapes.
Did you know? Abbot Marmaduke Huby more than doubled the community, from 22 to 52 monks, and carved his Latin motto on the great tower he built.
02 Malham Cove
United Kingdom54.071° N 2.159° W
Image by TimHill from Pixabay A kilometre north of the village of Malham, the green floor of the valley ends abruptly at a curved wall of pale limestone some 80 metres high and more than 300 metres across.
Did you know? Over the last million and a half years Malham was probably buried under ice sheets at least three times, each of which plucked rock from the cliff face.
03 Ribblehead Viaduct
United Kingdom54.210° N 2.370° W
Image by ebor from Pixabay The Ribblehead Viaduct carries the Settle–Carlisle railway across Batty Moss, a broad, wind-scoured bog at the head of Ribblesdale in the Yorkshire Dales. 5 metres into the ground.
Did you know? About 200 burials were recorded in the small churchyard at Chapel-le-Dale during the years the viaduct and the line nearby were being built.
04 Whitby Abbey
United Kingdom · 25.8 km from Scarborough54.488° N 0.608° W
Image by TimHill from Pixabay Abbess Hild founded a monastery for both men and women at Whitby in 657, on land granted by King Oswiu of Northumbria, and within seven years the new house had already hosted one of the most consequential meetings in the history of English Christianity.
Did you know? The Danish raids that emptied the monastery came in 867–870 under the Viking leaders Ivar the Boneless and Ubba.
05 Castle Howard
United Kingdom · 21.9 km from York54.121° N 0.906° W
Image by Pexels from Pixabay Castle Howard is one of the grandest houses in England, a Baroque palace set on a ridge about 15 miles (24 km) north of York.
Did you know? The Carlisle branch of the Howard family has owned the house for more than three centuries.
06 Rievaulx Abbey
United Kingdom · 34.2 km from York54.258° N 1.117° W
Tilman2007/Dr. Volkmar Rudolf · CC BY-SA 4.0 Walter Espec, lord of nearby Helmsley, gave the land, and in March 1132 a party of twelve monks sent from Bernard of Clairvaux's own abbey in Burgundy founded Rievaulx — only the second Cistercian house established in England, and the first north of the Trent.
Did you know? At the Dissolution the royal commissioners counted 72 buildings on the site, served by 102 lay employees.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in North Yorkshire?
- On our list, Fountains Abbey ranks first, followed by Malham Cove and Ribblehead Viaduct.
- Why are there so many ruined abbeys in North Yorkshire?
- In the 12th century Cistercian and other monks founded great monasteries in the remote Yorkshire valleys, which grew rich on sheep farming. Henry VIII dissolved them between 1536 and 1541, their lands were sold and their roofs stripped, leaving the ruins seen today.
- Was Malham Cove once a waterfall?
- Yes. At the end of the last ice age meltwater poured over the cliff as a great waterfall, but today the stream sinks underground on the limestone above and re-emerges at the foot of the cove.
- Which films and series were made at Castle Howard?
- Castle Howard stood in for Brideshead in both the 1981 television series and the 2008 film of Brideshead Revisited, and it appeared as the Duke of Hastings's house in the first season of Bridgerton.
- What kinds of places are there to see in North Yorkshire?
- In our collection, the places in North Yorkshire are most often ruins (2), cliffs (1), abbeys (1) and viaducts (1).
- How many places are on this list in North Yorkshire?
- The list covers 6 places.